Keeping India Safe Online

When seventeen-year-old Rajesh went over to his friend Joshua’s house to finish work on a college presentation, he had no idea that his actions that night would set off a huge police investigation. As soon as he arrived and turned on his laptop to create a PowerPoint slideshow, it started detecting wireless networks in the vicinity. He ignored the popup messages for a while, but during a short break a few hours later curiosity got the better of him, and he decided to see if he could get online.

The first two networks he tried to connect to required passwords, and a third connected but didn’t allow Rajesh to load any websites. However the fourth network he tried, simply named “default”, was lying wide open. He was able to check his mail and chat with friends within seconds. The two boys took full advantage of the open connection, surfing the Web and downloading music. At one point, Joshua got into an online argument with a girl he had tried to ask out the previous week. In a fit of anger, he decided to play a cruel prank on her and created a fake Orkut account in order to leave hurtful scraps for her to read. He figured that even if she realized it was him, his own computer’s IP address wouldn’t be linked to the account. Rajesh, for his part, thought it was a brilliant idea.

It was only the next evening that Anandita, the object of Joshua’s attention, got a call from a friend about the vulgar scraps on her profile page. Shaken, she immediately checked her account and saw them. She knew without a doubt who had left the comments there, especially considering the timing of her fight with Joshua the previous night. She wondered whether to just delete them and forget the whole episode, but eventually told her father about the whole thing.

Anandita, together with her enraged father, approached the Mumbai police, who directed them to the Cyber Crime Investigation Cell. The complaint was acted on immediately, and not only was Joshua apprehended, but his neighbor, whose IP address was unfortunately linked to the crime because of weak router security, was given a stern warning.__STARTQUOTE__The moment anyone accesses cyberspace, anonymity is impossible. it is much easier to catch somebody when he’s online than otherwise, simply because once a person logs on to the internet, he leaves footprints behind.__ENDQUOTE__The names in the story above have been changed, but similar real-life incidents have been making headlines in the newspapers for a while now. Take for instance the various reports of students posting obscene or defamatory statements about their schools online, or the bomb threats sent to the police through unsecured Wi-Fi networks. People even deface websites or install illegal keyloggers on others’ computers just to see whether or not anyone will be smart enough to trace them. So how do the police cope with these new-age nuisances and keep criminals and pranksters under control?

Mumbai has had a Cyber Crime Investigation Cell for nearly a decade, but now the effort to rein in online crime has been boosted by a dedicated police station. Such stations already exist in Bangalore and Hyderabad, making Mumbai the third city to create a dedicated force of police officers to chase online criminals. The CCIC is now equipped with the latest equipment, expertise, and more importantly, trained officers. CHIP met with Addl. Commissioner of Police Mr Deven Bharti, who directly supervises and controls the working of the Mumbai CCIC.